Episode I
by JadeRabbyt
Summary: We've all heard the theme song, but just how did Danny become a phantom? R&R to get the lowdown. Houston, we have COMPLETION.
1. Chapter I

Episode I  
  
By JadeRabbyt  
  
Disclaimer: Style and errors belong to me. Everything else is the property of Nickelodeon including characters and basic plot. The story is based on the theme song, because I thought that his origins deserved their own episode. I haven't read any other fanfics because I need time to develop the characters on my own, so if this plot has been written before by somebody just email me with a link to the story and I'll credit them in the next update. Comments and constructive criticism welcome. Forgive my terse introduction/disclaimer, but I haven't slept in over 24 hours due to the friggin' airlines. That said, enjoy the story!

Danny Fenton was an average, ordinary kid who went to an average, ordinary high school. He became acquainted with the inner contents of a trash can on more than one occasion, as is customary for freshman boys, and he was liable to forget his homework every so often in favor of movies or friends. He enjoyed video games and running about the city on his scooter, and he possessed a healthy aversion to his older sister's prodding in her pursuit of a career as a psychologist. Danny Fenton's two best friends, Sam and Tucker, were both relatively normal but graced with some distinguishing traits.  
  
The most striking aspect of Sam was her affinity for black clothing, activism, and generally cynical disposition. Her shoulder-length black hair was usually combed straight, accentuated by a small ponytail in back held in place with a purple scrunchee which matched the rest of her typically black and purple clothing. The least striking aspect about her was her fabulous wealth, which encompassed a home bowling alley and theater. She didn't speak of it at all, and Tucker and Danny didn't discover it until later in the year when they visited her house.  
  
Tucker was also favored with distinguishing personal traits. He was a bit of a technophile, not enough to be socially inhibited by it but just enough to have an advantage in technology over most others. Emotionally, he was a fairly well-adjusted freshman, despite the apparent contradiction in terms, and his middle-class family was respectable enough.  
  
Danny also had a middle-class family, but they were not in the least respectable. His mother and father were single-mindedly devoted to the pursuit of ghosts and often neglected the business of their children in the frenzy of their enthusiasm. They lived on a city corner; their red-brick building unmistakably marked with the glaring neon sign "Fenton Works," visible to everyone who traveled down either of the cross-streets. Tourists would note with astonishment the bulbous metal extensions on the roof, hovering above the sign and moored by cylindrical tunnels and tangles of cables. The advanced ghost-hunting laboratory could easily have been mistaken for a children's museum.  
  
Little did the pedestrians and drivers know that the real excitement was beneath the city streets, where Danny's parents conducted the most remarkable-or harebrained, depending on one's inclination-of their inventions and experiments. They attempted the construction of machines to detect the spectral elements, machines to contain them, machines to destroy them. These ambitious projects were constructed on the life-long hope of Jack Fenton, Danny's father, to catch a ghost and unveil it to the scientific community, which for so long had unanimously held his fixation to be the product of delusional obsession. The vast majority of his attempts ended up in the scrap heap, true to the predictions of his critics. Every so often, however, one of his inventions would work, and it was on one of these occasions that Danny Fenton became unique.  
  
The harsh beeping of the alarm grated against the morning. Danny groaned and tightened the covers about his head, but the noise kept on until he reached out and slammed the snooze button. He sighed and went back to sleep, but ten minutes later when the drone of early morning traffic was once again splintered by his alarm. He blinked slowly, brushing the shock of black hair out of his eyes, and rolled out of bed, turning off the alarm on his way out. Yawning, he called to mind the day's activities. He had some vague notions about school, then maybe friends later, and somewhere in there was something else he couldn't remember. He rubbed his eyes and headed for the bathroom, leaving his morning amnesia to sort itself out while he took a shower.  
  
Jazz was in the shower. He waited, staring thoughtlessly for an interminable amount of time until his sister had finished, then stumbled in. Following the completion of his hygienic duties, he arrived for breakfast to find Jazz ready to leave. "See you at school."  
  
"Hm," he said, removing cereal from the cupboard.  
  
"Good luck on that huge test of yours," she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Danny's eyes boggled. "Looks like you'll need it," she said, not unkindly. She left muttering about the detrimental effects of the example set by their parents.  
  
Danny threw the cereal back in the cupboard and rushed up the stairs to his room, throwing his biology textbook and mess of notes into his backpack before racing back downstairs. His mother, already dressed in her blue lab jumpsuit, caught him on her way up from the basement.  
  
"At least take a banana! You really shouldn't be skipping breakfast." He started to protest, but she shoved the fruit into his hand. His father arrived in the kitchen behind her, and Danny caught him expounding on the sound design of another ghost-oriented invention.  
  
"I tell ya Maddie, we'll have them with this one for sure! I can't wait to fire it up this afternoon." He spied Danny on his way out the door. "Son, I want you here this afternoon to see this. It will be man's first look into the ghost world."  
  
"But Dad, I was going to go with Tucker and Sam to-"  
  
"Your friends can wait a bit, Danny. I want the family to be here for this."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Listen to your father, Danny."  
  
He sighed. "Alright."  
  
"Great!" his father said, grinning broadly. "See you this afternoon!" he called, his large frame retreating back down the basement stairs.  
  
Danny rushed out the door and ran most of the way to his school, sparing only a fleeting thought for the name, Casper High. Although he had been seeing that same tiresome name for the last month now, he had yet to pass it without feeling a twinge of mixed frustration and curiosity. While his parents' preoccupation left him with more privacy at home, it bothered him that it had to be associated with his school. Today, however, he had no time for such considerations and ran past the wooden sign to the lawn of the school.  
  
He walked quickly towards the entrance but was soon distracted by the jeers of the football players. They stood at some distance from him and were shouting and laughing in his general direction. Dash, the broad- shouldered quarterback and particularly devoted bully, yelled something about his pants. He was confused until he remembered that he had a banana in his hand, and shamefacedly shoved it in a nearby trash can. "I'll see you later for your lunch money, Fenton!" Dash shouted. Danny continued walking quickly toward the school, meeting Sam and Tucker in the hallway.  
  
Tucker waved lazily. "Hey Danny. What's up?"  
  
"Huge test. Up late studying." He reached his locker and pulled out the day's necessities, then slid down to the floor and pulled out study materials. "I don't know what I'm going to do here."  
  
"Same with me." Tucker said, joining him on the floor. Sam looked down on them for a moment and shook her head.  
  
"You probably would have been better off just getting some sleep. If the test doesn't go well, at least we can go hang out after school."  
  
"No can do on that either. My parents want me home for some dumb thing they built."  
  
"Are they still off on that ghost kick? You'd think they'd give it a rest." Tucker said.  
  
"My parents? Never."  
  
"Well, at least they're fairly cheerful mad scientists," Sam said with a shrug and half-smile.  
  
"That makes it so much better." The bell rang through the halls, and Danny gathered his things and walked toward class. "See you guys later."  
  
"Good luck," Tucker offered.  
  
"He'll need it," Sam said quietly.  
  
Several minutes later, Danny was slumped at his station in Mr. Lancer's biology class. The balding, beer-bellied instructor paced the front of the room for a moment as the last of the students entered and took their seats.  
  
"Late again, Mr. Jackson. That makes three tardies. See me after class about your detention." Lancer spoke with his trademark quiet maliciousness. "As you all know, I hope, today is your first big test of this biology class. If you do well, good for you. It means you are a hardworking student who will probably do well in my class. If you do poorly, well, you might start looking forward to a busy summer." He favored the class with a smirk. "You may begin once you receive the tests. Talkers will automatically fail."  
  
Danny took his test dismally and gave it a once-over, pencil at the ready. He thought it looked intimidating, but manageable, and set to work on it. As he progressed, so did the hour and the difficulty of the questions. Danny ran a valiant race against the minute hand, but he was still scribbling away on the last page when the bell rang.  
  
There was a clatter as students rose to leave, and Lancer called for all the tests to be turned in. Danny was still scrambling, and Lancer strode for his desk. "In case you didn't hear me properly, I said this test is over."  
  
"I just need a few more min-" But Lancer snatched away his paper and walked away. "I'll see you tomorrow, Fenton."  
  
Danny packed his things and left. The test had done little for his disposition, and he waded through the hallway crowds tired and frustrated. The three hours before lunch passed relatively uneventfully. He dozed through most of English class, only to discover when he awoke that the class had been assigned an essay, Schaffer format. He blinked lazily at the news and asked his informant what a Schaffer essay was. Algebra was a little better. He was cheered to discover that he got a B on the last quiz, and the assigned homework looked easy enough. The Spanish teacher gurgled and chirped away for the last hour, and then the bell rang for lunch.  
  
He met Sam and Tucker at their usual table in the lunchroom. They greeted him and inquired about his test.  
  
"Bad."  
  
"That's a bummer. You tried, though," Tucker offered encouragingly.  
  
"That's more than most kids did in Lancer's class. I heard from one of the juniors that Lancer is one of the toughest graders in the school. Lots of upperclassmen transfer to ILS midway through first quarter," Sam added.  
  
"ILS?" Danny asked.  
  
"Intro to Lab Science."  
  
"Oh." He gave his ostensible mashed potatoes a poke, and they quivered like Jell-O. "I was doing alright until the bell rang. Missed half the last page." He left the potatoes to quiver undisturbed and took a bite of the hamburger. "The rest of the day should go fine though. PE and geography. How are you doing, Tucker? I heard about that big project Bytters' assigned."  
  
"Yeah, well, Bytters is from another planet. It's nothing a little internet data dredging can't fix." They continued to talk until the bell called them off to class. Danny muddled through the rest of the school day without incident, and he called goodbye to Sam and Tucker at the end of it and began the walk home.  
  
He walked slowly, in no great hurry to be taken prisoner and endure hours of paranormal nonsense. A breeze tugged at his shirt, and he noticed the trees were just beginning to yellow, just beginning to recognize the onset of fall. He felt the hard concrete sidewalk beneath his feet and glanced around him at the people going in and out of various shops, laden with groceries, small bags, and occasionally a child. It gave him heart to see life proceeding as usual, with himself yet another actor on the set, going about his business. He liked who he was, but he wished that he was something more. He had friends, he had pretty good grades, he had a computer and a nice blue scooter, but he was nothing special. Some days- this one for example-he even seemed to be an average failure. He'd probably get a C- or something on the test. He couldn't even fail dramatically.  
  
He felt a sharp jerk and brush of fabric. "Watch it!" a young woman scolded. She continued on her way without stopping, striding away purposefully. Danny looked after her for a moment. She looked about twenty and carried a black briefcase. Well-groomed and well-dressed. He turned stolidly and continued home.   
  
He let the front door slam shut behind him and ran up the stairs to his room, barely missing the begoggled gaze of his mother as she appeared at the bottom of the basement stairs. He shut the door of his room, frowning a bit at the "Danny, is that you dear?" that drifted up after him.  
  
"Yeah Mom, it's me." He heard her on the stairs and opened his door to save her the knock.  
  
"Make sure you stick around until Jazz gets home. She's tutoring someone for about a half hour today, but we'll start the demonstration as soon as she's back from school."  
  
"Fine."  
  
She smiled with excitement. "We're sure this one will work. You're Dad's been working on it since college, you know." Her face clouded for a moment. "There was an accident or two, but we're both sure it'll work this time!"  
  
He clenched his teeth. He was still tired, his test had been difficult, and it didn't help that his mother was ambivalent. "I'm sure it will. I'll see you then," he said curtly.  
  
"Great! I'm sure you'll like it." She grinned and walked back downstairs, and Danny tried not to slam the door behind her.  
  
He sat down at his computer and opened a game. He reveled in forty minutes of vivid, bloody zombie-slaughtering before his parents called him down. The game had put him in a considerably better mood, and he resolved to show at least a polite enthusiasm for the latest dysfunctional crackpot device out of respect for his poor, delusional parents. He walked down to the basement where the rest of his family was already gathered. His father grinned at his entrance.  
  
"Good, we're all here. Now, because of the enormous and far-reaching implications of the device I am about to demonstrate, I feel obligated to explain it in great detail to you both. Everyone pull up a chair," he instructed, wheeling out a chalkboard. Danny's mother stood beside Jack, while Jazz and Danny carried out a couple folding chairs from against the wall. He nudged her and rolled his eyes. She gave him a sympathetic look, and they both prepared for an indefinitely long lecture on supernatural physics.  
  
While his Dad got started on the diatribe, Danny searched the room for the new invention. He saw a tangle of wires that might be it, but he soon located a new machine against the far wall. It was a portal of sorts, about eight or nine feet in diameter. There was a small control pad mounted on the wall next to it, and various service lights shone around the circumference. He thought he recognized it from schematics that had been left lying around the lab in previous weeks. He kept half an ear open for his father's explanation.  
  
"...and as you can see from this mothman equation, the two extraparameters stack to form a perfect ring of exorcist's backlash..." Danny sighed and traded bored expressions with his sister. He leaned back and began to drift off, and he was half-asleep when Jazz elbowed him awake. "Finally, the last two restraints are made to cancel each other out, eliminating the dimensional barrier." His father chuckled. "Essentially, the machine you see on the far wall will allow us to enter and exit the ghost zone at will!"  
  
"His brevity never ceases to astonish me," he heard Jazz mutter.  
  
"Now, the moment we've all been waiting for," their father announced. "The first activation of the Fenton Ghost Portal!" He and their mother walked over to it proudly, and their children stood and followed, stopping a safe distance away. Both remembered several occasions when the ceremonial activations had turned explosive, leaving one or both of them with an embarrassing lack of eyebrows and a bruise or two.  
  
"Go ahead and set up the computer, Maddie."  
  
Their mother worked away on the large computer console against the adjoining wall for a moment, then gave him the thumbs up. "You're all set."  
  
"Terrific," he grinned like a toddler at Christmas, then walked around the side and brought out the connecting ends of two cables. "Prepare to be amazed." He slowly, tentatively, began to bring the two connections together. In spite of himself, Danny found his father's excitement catching, and he tensed in nervous preparation for something unexpected.  
  
"Here goes!" His father brought the cables together, then glanced toward the portal in excitement to observe...nothing. "Any minute now..." Danny remained on edge. Ten, twenty, forty seconds passed, and nothing happened. Danny relaxed.  
  
Jack frowned worriedly. "Hmph." He unplugged the cables, blew off invisible dust, then plugged it in again. Still nothing.  
  
Maddie clicked away at the keyboard. "All the settings are right. I don't know what's wrong." Jack hurried over and peered over her shoulder.  
  
"Are you sure? Maybe that there?"  
  
"Nope, that's right, dear. Maybe it's the hardware."  
  
Danny relaxed completely as his father began to fuss about the portal, tugging and pushing at wires and plates. "False alarm," he said softly to his sister.  
  
"I thought this one might work for a minute."  
  
"Yeah, me too," Danny replied.  
  
"I'm sorry dear. It was a really good effort," Maddie offered.  
  
"Everything was built right, the math checked out. It just doesn't make sense," he complained petulantly.  
  
"Well, I booked us for dinner at Marty's Mighty Meat House. We can still enjoy ourselves tonight," Maddie said.  
  
"We can celebrate the fact that the lab is still intact. Besides, it isn't healthy to dwell for too long on disappointment," Jazz said. "I'm sure a relaxing family dinner will help us cope with this in a psychologically healthy way."  
  
"Sounds great, but I think I should stay home," Danny said it a feint of regret. He wasn't eager to go out with the ghost brigade tonight, especially after he'd already sat through the briefing.  
  
"Aw, come along with us, Danny, it'll be a nice family time," his mother pushed gently.  
  
"I've really got homework to do. An English essay and Algebra, plus some sleep. I'm so tired I could nap through next Saturday."  
  
"A growing boy needs his rest, Maddie. He has his school work to attend to," his father said with a twinge of pride. Danny looked hopefully at his mother.  
  
"Well, I guess it would be alright. Just make sure you study, though. No TV."  
  
"No problem. You guys all have fun. Sorry about the ghost-thing, though."  
  
His father gave the machine a last quizzical look as he headed for the door. "I just don't understand it." He brightened as they all headed for the door. "Oh well. Have I told you about the Fenton thermos ghost catcher I'm building? I think this one'll really work. It will be able to- "  
  
"See you later Danny," his mother interjected. "Get some rest, sweetie." He waved goodbye. Jazz waved back, and Danny mouthed "Good luck" to her as his parents turned toward the stairs.  
  
"-catch ghosts in mid-air, and what's more..." Danny could still hear his father's muffled voice up the stairs, and it was only silenced as they left the house. He smiled slightly, thinking of the fabulous time his sister would be having. Their dad could go on for hours without pause about his latest ghost-junk.  
  
He turned back to look at the portal. Its size, if not its functionality, impressed him. Most of his father's projects were simple hand-held devices rather than huge fixtures, and usually they did something when activated. He found it odd that his parents would work so hard on something that hadn't so much as sparked when they turned it on. In spite of himself, he was a little curious as to what had gone wrong, and against his better judgment, he decided to check it out.  
  
He remembered the explosions, curtains of airborne green goo, and multicolored fires all to well to try anything unshielded. He remembered that his parents kept the spare jumpsuits in a side closet. Moving some spare parts out of the way, he cleared a path to it and managed to pry the door open. He saw several giant orange suits on hangers, black gloves and collar, and his mother's smaller turquoise suits in the same design. He knew he wouldn't fit in his dad's suits, and he didn't want to try his mom's if he could help it. He was about to shut the door and just try it with his own clothes when he noticed a smaller, white nylon piece against the other suits, shoved against the closet wall. He tugged at it, and a black suit fell off its hanger into his hands. White, with black collar, gloves, feet, and waist. He held it for a moment, stretching it experimentally and holding it against himself for comparison. It was exactly his size.  
  
He wondered why his parents hadn't shown it to him. Had they been waiting for the right moment? Did they think he was going to follow in their footsteps? He hoped not. Having grown up with his parents' obsession over ghosts, he couldn't help but take it a little seriously, but he hoped they hadn't assumed that he was going into that line of work. They'd be disappointed. He checked to see if there was anything in his sister's size. Something in pink or red, perhaps? He didn't see anything for her.  
  
He shrugged and changed into the suit. He would put it back after he was done, and even if he didn't, he didn't think they would notice it was gone for some time. The flip side of it, he speculated, was that his parents might care about him more than they showed. He figured it was more likely that they just wanted someone to carry on the torch for their little crusade. He rubbed his eyes. He needed sleep.  
  
Once he managed to climb into the suit, he found that it was not altogether as uncomfortable as it looked on his parents. The material was a type of stiffened nylon, something like a cross between that of a swimsuit and a lab coat. It had an odd, rubbery texture about it, and he suspected his parents had probably soaked it or layered it with something they supposed to be supernatural. He hoped it was the good kind of supernatural and that he was not pouring on gasoline to protect against fire.  
  
Finally suited up, he approached the portal and put one hand out on its shiny metal surface. Through the gloves he could feel the cool, slick metal. The machine shop had certainly done its job properly. He walked around it, looking to make sure the wires were plugged in properly. It all looked fine to him. He glanced at the computer screen his mother had been working on. Lines of commands and several viewgraphs filled the screen, but there was nothing he could understand. If a mistake had been made, it was more likely to have been on his father's part, anyway. He was inventive but not always thorough.  
  
He took a look at the cable. One end ran into the side support of the portal-properly connected, he noted-and the other ran into a mess of tall, narrow canisters at the side of the wall. He wondered curiously if he'd ever been warned about messing around in the lab and realized incredulously that they had not. He thought he should be used to that sort of thing by now, but it angered him that they didn't seem to care whether or not he blew himself up, and he took their omission as permission to risk it. He continued his inspections, checking the connections on the canisters. All good. Canister pressure levels: all maximized, except for one. The label on that one said, "spectral plasma" and reported on its dial only 25% the pressure of the others. Danny knew where they kept more plasma; they used it all the time. Walking quickly, telling himself that it was nothing, his parents would have caught something that obvious if it was out of place, he switched it for a new one, taking care to unplug the canisters from the portal first, then hooked the tangle up again and watched nervously. The machine still refused to either explode or work, and he wondered with growing frustration if there was much of a difference between the two with this one.  
  
He walked around it again, glaring at it and searching for changes. He didn't see any offhand. On the inside, a small red light blinked. His eyes widened, slightly incredulous. Had it been blinking before? He didn't think so. It was a large machine, and it would have been quite easy to miss something like that. Still, he took a closer look at it. Below the light was a label and a button. The label read, "fluid valve." The button was large and red.  
  
In spite of himself, Danny found this particular button very exciting. He wondered what would happen if he pressed it, told himself not to be an idiot and that under no circumstances should he press it, then he jumped as far out of the way as possible and slammed it down.  
  
There was a blinding green flash of light as electricity coursed through him. He heard someone screaming and a sizzling and snapping of wires and electronics, and as his mind and environment exploded with green heat, he thought that it was too soon for him and he wanted to see his friends again and then he lost consciousness.

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Comment, and thou shalt be blessed by the Hawaiian pig-fish humuhumunukunukuapua'a. (Yes, that really is the name of it.) Stay tuned for chapter 2, coming next weekend to a computer near you!


	2. Chapter II

A/N: Hello again, friendly people! Here is the much-anticipated chapter 2 and a cookie for RainbowSerenity for her good review and clairvoyance. I feel as though a word of explanation is in order to account for the amazingly original concept for this story. I suffer from acute perfectionism, so I want to explore the characters in something like this first before trying anything else. I thank all of my reviewers for their comments and encouragement. They make me all smiley. :-D On with the show!

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Danny Fenton woke up on a hard, flat surface and a glaring light in his eyes. He squinted against it and rolled over, realizing after a moment that he was on the floor. There were many gadgets scattered about and a couple counters on either side of him. He was frightened for a second before realizing he was in the lab. But why would he be in the lab?  
  
The instant after he asked the question, the entire accident poured itself into his memory, accompanied by a rather sharp headache. He sat up and saw the recently activated portal in front of him. It swirled with neon green and streaks of white, and it looked to Danny as though it was a field of pure energy. He realized numbly that it must be ghost energy, and that he was the one who had fixed it. He stared in amazement, watching the colors sizzle and swirl into one another inside the portal, but it quickly aggravated his headache and he looked away. He moved his limbs slowly, testing for injuries or breaks, finding everything in working order. He stood and brushed himself off, an almost unnecessary action as his suit was quite slick. His eyes tingled a bit, and the shock of hair falling over his face looked different. He hoped he hadn't burned off his eyebrows again, but he headed for the bathroom anyway to make sure.  
  
In the bathroom, he discovered that his black hair was pure, snow white and that his eyes had gone from blue to a striking glowing green. Oddly enough, the colors on his suit had also been inverted. He tried to lean on the sink for a closer look at himself, but his hand fell through the counter and he nearly lost his balance. He yelled in surprise and jerked his hand away. It came away invisible up to the elbow but faded back in after several seconds. Danny blinked and rubbed his temples, knowing it was a dream, it had to be a dream, his parents were both crackpots and things like this just didn't happen to kids like him. He opened his eyes and his hair was still white and his green eyes still glowed. He flexed his hand and rested it on the counter. It stayed there. He imagined it becoming transparent and immaterial, then tried to flex muscles that would do that sort of thing, and his hand fell through the counter again. He grinned. "Ah-Hah!" After some practice, he could grab cleaner out of the cabinet beneath the sink and bring it out through the top counter. He wondered if there was anything else he could do.  
  
Acting on a hunch and the stereotypes of every mutant movie he'd ever seen, he tried flying. Feeling slightly foolish, he jumped experimentally but fell normally back to earth, although he had definitely felt something. He gave it another shot, putting too much effort into it and bumping lightly against the ceiling. Grinning like an idiot, he looked at himself in the mirror and did the backstroke, giggling slightly. He righted himself against the wall, then decided to take on a more artistic perspective and flipped upside down. He tried to make a footprint on the ceiling, but the suit was too new to leave anything noticeable. He turned himself horizontally and tried to move, initially with a swimming motion. He found that, like the transparency and takeoff, it could only be done with his mind, which he found to be more convenient than physical effort anyway. He darted about the bathroom, deciding after colliding with the tiled wall one time too many that this sort of exercise was best carried out in a more open space. He reached for the doorknob and was on the verge of opening it when he heard a horrible sound.  
  
"Danny! We're home, sweetie!" Danny dropped clear out of the air and landed on his face with an audible "whumpf."  
  
He stood and began to panic. He remembered his parents many gizmos designed to catch, confine, kill, and just do generally nasty things to ghosts. It occurred to him that some or all of these might actually work if tested on the proper subject. Suddenly, he didn't want ghost powers. He didn't want to be a scientific freak or curiosity, and he wanted very much to be plain old Danny again, with black hair and nice blue eyes. He saw a flash of light and heard a zapping sound, but dismissed it impatiently as a trick of the light or his parents in the lab. He rather liked his old hair and eyes. He didn't want to be an albino; he didn't think girls liked albinos very much, and with green eyes Dash might taunt him as a leprechaun. An albino leprechaun. The thought struck him as extremely funny despite his circumstances, and he laughed.  
  
He choked quickly when his sister opened the door. "Oops! Sorry about that, Danny. I didn't know you were in here." She shut the door again and he heard her walking off, expecting her to return at any moment and ask why he had white hair, why his eyes were green, and where he had gotten that stupid-looking jumpsuit. But her footsteps receded harmlessly down the hall. He looked at himself in the mirror again. He was regular Danny Fenton. He even had his regular clothes on. He breathed a sigh of relief, then grabbed the door open and ran into his room before anything else could happen.  
  
He wondered what on earth he was supposed to do. He didn't want his parents to find out, first and foremost. He didn't know what they'd do to him, and he wasn't in the mood to find out. That left Sam and Tucker. Sam was pretty good at thinking rationally, and both struck him as trustworthy. He went to pick up the phone but thought better of it and logged onto an instant messenger instead. Tucker was online.  
  
"hey tucker" he typed. There was a pause, then a pleasant bleep as Tucker's reply popped up.  
  
"hi. wassup?"  
  
"I gtc you and Sam tomorrow early at school. can u come?"  
  
"sure. what's this about? study for another test?"  
  
"not quite. something came up. can't use the phone bc of privacy. can u call sam?"  
  
"np. c u tomorrow."  
  
"ok. bye"  
  
"leaving already?"  
  
"got to deal with something. can't talk now. tomorrow"  
  
"I'll tell sam"  
  
"thanks. bye"  
  
"bye" Danny logged off. He did have to go; he wanted to practice some more with his powers before facing his parents. He didn't want body parts phasing in and out of visibility when they were watching. After more experimenting, he discovered how to change himself into and out of his alter ego and discovered that he could still exercise his powers in normal- Danny-mode, but they were more difficult to control. He was in the middle of making his bed intangible when he heard his mother's voice from downstairs.  
  
"Goodnight, Danny, and don't stay up too late."  
  
"Goodnight son! Before you turn in though, come on down and take a look at the portal. It works now!"  
  
"Aw, gee Dad, I'm already in bed." Technically, it wasn't a lie. He was standing up to his waist in mattress.  
  
"Well... I guess you can see it in the morning. Good night!"  
  
"'Night!" He worried for a moment that they'd connect him to the machine's spontaneous activation, which reminded him that he also had to worry about his homework. He figured that homework could wait. He wanted to stay up and practice a little more...  
  
Danny worked long into the night. Phasing in and out, transforming from Danny Fenton to his new self and then back again. He worked on his piloting skills, and he was eventually able to navigate with a fair amount of accuracy, even if his precision was far from perfect. He loved exercising his new talents, and it was around four in the morning when he dropped off to sleep, exhausted.

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Thanks for reading, folks! The gnomes made me write a shorter chapter... The gnomes, the gnomes I tell you! Actually, there's a good reason for why the writing's good and the chapters are going to be shorter. I'll add a little note about it at the end of this story. If you're interested, take a look, if not, well then, don't look at it (duh). I'll give you all a penny for your thoughts if you want to review. Of course it will be a more of a conceptual penny, like the experience of getting a penny but without the actual penny involved. You wouldn't understand. It's a Zen thing. Anyway, check back soon for the final chapter!


	3. Chapter III

Ahnd heah, een eexheebeet Ah, vee see zee feenehl chahptah. Thanks much to all my reviewers, particularly RainbowSerenity, Silver Fang's Revenge, and Fox of Light. I appreciate the compliments and specifics. Everyone who reviewed has my permission to conceptualize their Zen pennies. :) Everyone, that is, except Chibi MP, who gets smacked upside the head with a large trout for other reasons. Enjoy the finale!

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He woke up the following morning to the bleeping of his alarm clock, irritating as always. He opened his eyes groggily and looked at the time. 6: 30. School didn't start until 8:30 . He didn't know why it was set so early. He didn't know what his dream meant, either. Some kind of crazy ghost-powered bonanza. He rolled over, but it put his arm in an uncomfortable position beneath him, so he adjusted it. His eyes snapped open and he looked at his arm, which had passed through his mattress. He sat up in a hurry and slammed his alarm off, but he had to slam twice since his arm passed through it the first time. He remembered anxiously the accident, his powers, his session with Tucker, and his parental dilemma. His eyes wandered dismally to the rows of sunlight peeking between the blinds and arranged neatly on his floor. Rows of muddy shade and morning light. He found it strangely encouraging, and he stood up to get ready for school.  
  
Breakfast went by without incident, other than his parents' enthusiastic acclaim for their recently successful failure. He froze suspiciously when they joked about his possibly fixing it, but nothing came of it and he was soon out the door to the bus. A spit wad on the bus hit him on the sleeve, and nobody noticed that the irritation he registered was accompanied by a slightly discolored aura about his eyes. Sam and Tucker met him at a bench outside of school, as yet quite empty since his was the first bus to arrive. He took a seat, shifting uncomfortably. "Hi guys."  
  
"Hey Danny. Why the early meeting?" Sam inquired.  
  
He glanced at the grains of the table, wondering if this was such a good idea. "Well, there was this...thing yesterday that happened, and I was... well, it was..." He looked at them, lost. "Listen, can I trust you guys? I mean really trust you guys? If I told you something, you'd never... you'd keep it a secret, right?"  
  
Tucker smiled at him. "Danny, anybody willing to show up at school early for someone isn't going to blackmail."  
  
Sam nodded. "You can trust us."  
  
He looked from one to the other. Sam looked earnest and curious; she could be trusted. Tucker waited passively, smiling knowingly, arms crossed on the table. "Well, alright. Last night my parents showed us a machine they built. They called it a ghost portal and it wouldn't work when they tried to turn it on."  
  
"As usual," Tucker said amicably.  
  
"Then they all left for dinner, but I begged out of it for homework and rest. So I started poking around alone-" Sam raised her eyebrows and half-smiled. "-but I was careful! Or I tried to be, but-"  
  
"It exploded," Sam finished.  
  
"No! Yes. Well, kind of. I got knocked out, and when I woke up..." He paused uncertainly.  
  
"What? What happened?" Sam asked.  
  
"Well, I have... powers, now."  
  
They exchanged a skeptical look. "Okay, what kind of powers?" Sam asked.  
  
"I'm not kidding!" He sighed in exasperation. "Watch." He passed his hand through the table. Tucker chocked on his skepticism, and Sam stared wide-eyed. "See? That's just the beginning of it. I can change into something, fly, make objects intangible, phase in and out... The accident made me a Danny Phantom."  
  
"But your parents are lunatics," Tucker stammered. "There's no such thing as ghosts." Danny's hand remained implanted in the table.  
  
"I think reality might disagree with you on that point, Tucker," Sam said, still staring in fascination at Danny's hand and the faint bluish glow at the border between it and the table. She tore her eyes away and glanced up at Danny. "What are you going to do?"  
  
He sighed and removed his hand. "I don't know. I don't know, especially with my parents being who they are. I don't know how I'm supposed to hide something like this, what I'm supposed to do with this..." He faltered.  
  
"It'll be alright," Sam said, placing her hand on his. "You've got something really special about you, now. You're unique out of everybody here!"  
  
"Yeah, by accident," he replied sourly.  
  
Tucker had finally gotten over his initial shock. "Wait, you've got Powers!" The capitalization was audible. "That's amazing! You can do all sorts of stuff to people now!" They both glared at him. "Well, he can."  
  
"That's not the point. I didn't ask for these powers. I actually liked being normal."  
  
"Really," Tucker said flatly.  
  
"Well, okay, so not really. But I certainly wasn't asking for ghost powers, although I guess they could potentially be pretty useful."  
  
Sam read the mischief on his face. "You have to be careful. If anyone finds out-"  
  
"I know, I know. I should be able to have a little bit of fun, though."  
  
"Now you're talkin'," Tucker said comfortably.  
  
"Just be careful," Sam cautioned again.  
  
"I will." He sighed. "These powers just came so randomly. I don't think I deserve them any more than the next guy."  
  
Sam shook her head. "Personally, I don't think that's true. Most people here at school are jerks. You're not a jerk, and neither is Tucker or I. You're a good guy, Danny, and I think that whoever-if a who is involved, that is-gave you these powers made a pretty good choice."  
  
Danny looked up at her. "Thanks." He thought he saw her blush, but it may have been the light.  
  
"I agree. Can you imagine powers like that in the hands of Dash?" Tucker laughed. "Complete mayhem."  
  
The bell rang for the start of class, and the three of then stood and gathered their things. "I'll catch up with you guys after school."  
  
"Right you will. You've got to give me a demonstration," Tucker said.  
  
"See you then," Sam added with a wave.  
  
Danny walked off to class, his mood considerably improved from when he'd left that morning. He was nervous about seeing Dash. Today, he wasn't sure if he was hoping to have or avoid a confrontation.  
  
Biology went relatively smoothly. Lancer made some snide remarks about the quality of yesterday's test results, but that was all other than some notes on organelles. In English there was more student griping about the essay, which he neglected to join in out of pensiveness. He was thinking more about what Tucker and Sam had said. He wanted to talk to them more at lunchtime. He still wasn't sure what he was to do with his powers, but by the end of class he was sure that he wasn't about to abandon them. In the meantime, he missed more notes on the Schaffer format, was caught "daydreaming" by his teacher, and was instructed to make up the time at lunch. He had forgotten to do his algebra homework, but he brushed it off easily since those assignments weren't worth much anyway. Spanish was simply smiling and nodding, and he was on the point of running out to meet his friends when he remembered his date with the English teacher. He spent the time making up algebra and getting notes on the essay, and when the bell rang he headed on to his next class. He was disappointed to have missed Sam and Tucker at lunch, but in the hallway he ran into someone he didn't really want to see at all.  
  
"Hey! Watch it, Fenton." Danny realized with chagrin that he'd spilled Dash's soda. "You spilled my soda!"  
  
He spoke quickly, backing up slowly. "Oh, I'm sorry! I was just on my way to class and I didn't-"  
  
"Yeah, I know you didn't. Tell you what, I'll do you a little favor and make sure that next time, you will." Dash's eyes narrowed and Danny had occasion to note that Dash had about eight inches and the position of football quarterback on him. In one deft motion, Dash grabbed Danny and shoved him into a nearby locker one of his buddies had held open and waiting.  
  
A stubby metal coat hanger dug into Danny's shoulders, a metal shelf quashed his head into his torso, and his legs were shoved into an impossibly scrunched position against somebody's books and coats. He heard Dash laughing outside the locker, and Danny watched his red and white jacket move back and forth from the slim ventilation slits in the locker door. He was sick, sick, sick of this sort of thing. But now, for the first time in a long time, Danny Fenton, once totally average, run of the mill geekbait, could do something about it. He felt a burst of relief as he went intangible, his legs came free and his shoulder was relieved. With a precision born of years of frustration, he flew out and sprung the locker open and threw in Dash in mid-laugh. He noticed with satisfaction the astonishment on the faces of Dash's accomplices, then flew off chuckling smugly to P.E.  
  
There were no further hang-ups for the remainder of the school day, and he met Sam and Tucker after school. "Hi guys," he greeted, walking up eagerly to them. "Do I ever have a story for you!"  
  
"We heard," Tucker said excitedly. "You must be Dash's locker demon. Most of the school knows about it." He grinned and flashed thumbs up. "Score one for the little guys."  
  
"If half the stuff we've been hearing is true, then you certainly did a number on Dash. I can't say I recommend making a habit of it, though," Sam added.  
  
"Yeah, I know. I don't really plan on doing that sort of thing often. But man," he said with a laugh, "was it ever overdue. It was great to finally be able to put that guy in his place."  
  
"So, are you still gonna give your eager fans a demonstration?" Tucker asked.  
  
"Sure! Come on; let's go to my parents' lab. They're out for the day on a ghost hunt in the country, and I want to show you the portal-thing they built." On the way to his house, Danny gave them the details on his run-in with Dash, and when he was done Tucker regaled them with tales of Bytters' evil project and the latest mayhem wrought in her class. Eventually they reached the chrome recesses of Danny's basement, and he pointed out the particular machine that had changed him so drastically.  
  
"Wow," Sam watched the swirling colors and the faint reflection on the floor emanating from the portal. "I guess they finally made something that works."  
  
"I helped a little," Danny added proudly.  
  
"What's on the other side, though?" Tucker asked.  
  
"Something my parents call the ghost zone. It's supposed to be the place where ghosts live."  
  
"It looks like something's moving in there," Sam said, squinting into it.  
  
Danny laughed nervously. "I don't think there would be. I'd hope my parents would at least have the sense to put some kind of filter in place." A thread of blue vapor slid out of his mouth and dissipated instantly. "Did you guys see-"  
  
"Look out!" Tucker shouted. A tentacle figure resolved itself in the portal and streamed out into the lab. Sam barely had time to jump out of the way, and the ghost hung in the air for a moment, growling incoherently.  
  
"Hey Danny, um, who's you're friend?" Sam asked. The ghost, a gooey bright green mutated octopus, hung in the air and jerked about spastically in surprise. Danny yelped slightly as his powers triggered themselves, sending a pair of incandescent blue bands outward from his waist, changing his eyes and hair and suiting him up. The ghost started in surprise and watched the odd transforming human warily. Danny began backing away, and the ghost took off after him.  
  
"See if you can fight it, Danny!" Tucker shouted eagerly after him.  
  
"Forget a fight; just get it back in the portal!" Sam yelled.  
  
"Easy for you guys to say!" He struggled into the air, but the ghost rammed him, sending them both into a pile of lab equipment. As he struggled with the ghost, it occurred to him briefly that at least his powers might be good for ghost-fighting, if he could ever learn to control them. He doubted the occasion for that would come up often. After all, what were the odds of something like this happening regularly?

END


End file.
